“Yes,” Gretchan said. Her face was pale, but she embraced him, kissing him quickly. “Thank you. I can’t think of another dwarf in the world who’d be willing to do what you’re doing.”
“Yeah, well… if they throw me in the dungeon again, promise you’ll come to visit me, all right? And bring your hammer.”
Eyes misting, she kissed him again. “Good luck,” she said through her tears.
“That’s not very likely,” he replied.
Still, her words gave him some hope as he stepped onto the lift platform, which was nestled into the docking port beside the catwalk. He winked at Gretchan, trying to look nonchalant as she started turning the crank, even though he felt a knot in his stomach. The lift swayed slightly as it came free and started to descend. He wished he had a weapon.
She dropped him quickly, the lift plunging with almost dizzying speed toward the middle of the long hall. Brandon had to grab the supporting line and hold on for his life. The Neidar, he could see, were thronging to both sides of the cavernous entrance, striving to push through the ranks of their comrades to strike at the thin, slowly retreating lines of mountain dwarf defenders.
“It’s a trap!” Brandon shouted when the lift was still twenty feet above the floor. He waved toward the open gate. “Get out of here! They’re going to crush you with rocks from overhead!”
A few of the Neidar, milling nearby, stared up at him in surprise. Some pointed their weapons at him but were restrained by others who were listening to his shouts. They collected around the lower lift dock, regarding him with more curiosity than hostility.
“The mountain dwarves let you through the gates on purpose,” he shouted, dropping still lower, pointing at the open entrance. “They want you all in the hall, under the trap. See how they’re pulling back, letting you fill up this space? As soon as they back into the towers, they’ll drop a mountain’s worth of rocks on your heads!”
Several of the hill dwarves warily began to edge toward the open gates, pushing through the stream of attackers still spilling in to the great fortress. Others glanced at their comrades uneasily, wondering about the mountain dwarf tactics-the plan that was unfolding just as Brandon said it would. The sun was low in the sky, rays of dying light spilling in through the tall gates, illuminating the battle raging at the foot of the East Tower.
Already the two ranks of the defenders had withdrawn almost completely out of the center of the hall. Doors opened behind them at each far end as, one by one, the Klar and Hylar warriors slipped away into the towers themselves, leaving smaller and smaller pockets of their companions to pretend a defense of the interior.
The lift slammed to rest on the floor, knocking Brandon over. But he stood up and held up his empty hands before anyone could approach him-a gesture he hoped the Neidar would take as proof of his nonhostile intentions. The dual battles raged some distance away, but more than a hundred hill dwarves had gathered around the platform. It rested on a docking shelf a couple of feet above the ground, so it almost felt like a small stage. Turning through a circle, Brandon exhorted the dwarves to all sides.
“Get out of here while you can!” he shouted. “Spread the word. There’s a whole shelf of rocks up there”-he gestured toward the ceiling-“thousands and thousands of tons of them! The mad Klar is waiting for the chance to dump it on the lot of you!”
“What about you?” one of the Neidar shouted hostilely.
“Yes, me too!” Brandon shouted back. “I’m risking my life to warn you!”
As more of his listeners looked upward, more turned and made for the gate, many of them shouting and gesturing to the Neidar still pouring in to turn around and go back. The purpose of the Tharkadan trap was well known to all dwarves-hill dwarves as well as mountain dwarves had been saved the last time it was used, long ago during the War of the Lance. Any enemy breach in the old days would be defended by filling the interior with rubble. Most of the hill dwarves thought that mechanism had been destroyed beyond repair. They didn’t realize that Tarn Bellowgranite had dedicated himself to restoring it.
“You!” the voice shot through the din of the battle, and Brandon turned to see Rune charging him. “Bastard! Spy!” shouted the hill dwarf, raising a battle axe over his head as he sprinted closer. The sight of the enemy who had so tormented him inflamed Brandon with a fiery determination to fight-and kill-his old enemy.
And even more significant to Brandon’s eye was that battle axe itself: the Neidar Rune carried Brandon’s own weapon, the family heirloom that had been Balric Bluestone’s, stolen from Brandon upon his first capture. The Kayolin dwarf growled an almost animal sound and flexed his knees, stepping toward the edge of the platform. Even though he was unarmed, he eagerly awaited the hill dwarf’s charge, and he looked almost foolishly vulnerable to his frenzied attacker.
With a howl of rage, Rune sprang upward, hesitating only slightly in the face of Brandon’s reckless advance. That was all the opening the Kayolin dwarf needed. He stepped back nimbly, and Rune stumbled as he tried to land on the lift platform, which was a few feet higher than the floor. Brandon lowered his shoulder and charged, driving into his opponent’s solar plexus, plunging too close for the long-hafted weapon to come in to play.
The two dwarves tumbled to the platform, rolling to the side, and Brandon-his muscles fueled by long weeks of frustration and indignity-drove a fist into the underside of Rune’s jaw. The hill dwarf’s head snapped back with a crack of bone as his spine fractured. He fell dead, and Brandon snatched the axe from his lifeless fingers before his body even stopped twitching.
Still tense from the sudden combat, he raised the axe over his head and shouted at his dumbfounded observers. “I’m telling the truth! Get out while you can!”
The flow of the attackers coming in the gate had slowed dramatically as they heard the warnings from Brandon and from other fleeing Neidar, and in another few moments, the advance had stopped altogether, the front rank of hill dwarves remaining outside the gate, peering nervously upward and edging back. More and more of Brandon’s listeners were streaming toward the gate as well.
Getting the attention of the dwarves actively engaged in combat was a tougher challenge, the Kayolin dwarf knew. “Warn your comrades!” he exhorted his listeners. “Get them out of here-as many as will listen. There’s no time to waste!”
Some of the Neidar did head toward one or the other pocket of battle, though more thought ill of the risk. Brandon stayed on the lift platform, waving and shouting, drawing the attention of more and more Neidar. Then he heard an enraged shout, a voice that compelled his attention.
“My prisoner!” roared Harn Poleaxe, rushing toward him from the skirmish at the base of the East Tower. The enemy commander stood head and shoulders above his men, his own hulking size augmented by the helm with its lofty plumes.
“He’s condemned to die! Don’t listen to him, you fools!” cried the Neidar commander, swatting at several dwarves. He shouted at the warriors waiting outside the gates. “Attack! Hit them now while the hour of victory is at hand!”
Looking shamefaced and sheepish, the hill dwarves tried to swallow their fears and move, albeit reluctantly, back into the hall. Harn had his sword drawn as he charged toward the mountain dwarf, through the ring of Brandon’s listeners, his face contorted with rage. Brandon was shocked to see that face, scarred as it was by blisters and scabs, lumpy and misshapen, swollen like an overripe melon too long in the sun.
“He’s the spy we had in chains!” cried Poleaxe to warriors left and right as he raced toward Brandon. “What kind of idiots are you-letting him talk you out of our great victory? Leave him to me; my sword will put an end to his lies.”
Brandon, with relish, raised his axe, the haft so familiar that it felt like an extension of his own hands. He met Harn at the edge of the lift platform, parrying the Neidar’s first blow with a crossing block, but he was sent stumbling back, overcome by the big hill dwarf’s strength. Harn sprang upward onto the lift platform, raising his sword to brush aside Brandon’s return slash, a powerful overhead swing. His face was crazed, more monstrous than dwarf, and he closed in with a rush. The two blades met with a ringing clash, and again Brandon stepped back, astonished at Harn’s strength.
Harn had always been a big, sturdy dwarf, but it was obvious to Brandon that he had grown in size and power since their journey from Kayolin. It all had started, Brandon remembered, on the day Poleaxe had presided over his trumped-up trial in Hillhome’s square. The dwarf had seemed magically enhanced that day and from that day on. Brandon understood that he was in the fight of his life and that he was at a clear disadvantage with his opponent.
For several seconds the two dwarves circled each other on the lift platform. Brandon was grateful, at least, that the rest of the hill dwarves didn’t rush to their leader’s assistance. Not that Harn needed help in any event, but
